There has been proposals of materials which are able to “self-heal” after physical breakage. By “self-heal”, it refers to the ability of being able to resume the original form after the breakage. However, most if not all such conventional materials are not able to perform the self-healing function in a moist environment or under water. This is due to, for example, hydrogen-bonded supramolecular polymers generally can rarely heal themselves in water because water is a strong competitor for hydrogen bonding and the hydration of the hydrogen bonding motifs would inhibit intermolecular hydrogen bonding and material healing.
As such, inventors of the present invention have perceived that it would be highly desirable to develop polymeric materials that are self-healable after mechanical damages, especially for these materials serving in wet or aqueous environments.
The present invention seeks to address these issues, or at least to provide an alternative to the public.